


Telling Time

by Jezunya



Category: Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Child Death, Gen, Murder-Suicide, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide, depressing Victorian lit fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 09:59:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13051710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jezunya/pseuds/Jezunya
Summary: It seems it should be a straightforward thing, the world and children and when to have ‘em, yet every time his parents make a choice one way or another, it seems as knotted up as the cord in his hands.





	Telling Time

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for my 19th Century British Lit class this past semester, as a "creative option" alternative to a traditional essay. It's based on _Jude the Obscure_ by Thomas Hardy, which... I do not recommend. Like at all. It's a weird, boring, depressing book with sudden child murder-suicide in the middle! Those wacky Victorians, man.
> 
> As ~~threatened~~ promised on [tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/post/168210090494/jezunya-jezunya-jezunya-jezunya-both), here it is for yall's reading horror.

The world has never made much sense to Time – Jude, his new parents have christened him, after his father, which is certainly understandable. Passing on one’s name seems to be a main reason that people bring children into their family. Still, it’s hard to think of himself as Jude when Jude is his father. Time is no one’s father, nor can he consider himself particularly little; he is the size of any child who has lived the years he has, so he can be neither big nor small. But the choices of the adults around him are opaque to him, from what they call him to when they decide to bring new children home. It seems it should be a straightforward thing, the world and children and when to have ‘em, yet every time his parents make a choice one way or another, it seems as knotted up as the cord in his hands.

Arabella had not wanted him in Australia, and yet she had seemed to be his mother at first. Not a real mother like Sue, but a sort of temporary mother, keeping him only until his father wanted him. That he had a father, somewhere far away, had never been in any doubt; Arabella had rarely passed a chance to remark on Time’s father, though she would not speak of him at length when asked, and soon grew annoyed if Time persisted, and so he learned after a thrashing or two not to ask at all. He did not actually remember asking about his father, or remember the precise moment when he learned not to. He only knew that he had done, he must have, at some point, because how else would he know so strongly to hold his tongue when his fake mother would throw back her head in disgust and say, “Ye’re so much like him, always so dour and serious. What a sorry parting gift you were!”

She hadn’t come round to do any sort of motherly things all that often, though, so Time hadn’t had to refrain from asking much at all. Mostly, he kept out of the way, quiet in a corner, watching Arabella and her mother and father serve food and drink in their bar through the day, except when Arabella was away for days at a time, usually after smiling long and bright at some man she’d served, her cheeks sucked in so that dimples shone there temporarily. Arabella’s parents did not want him either, and neither did they want _her_ : The woman he had thought to be his grandmother had a favorite line of complaint, in which she went on and on that she had already been a mother once, to Arabella, that she had done her time, and that children only brought trouble to one’s house. This usually was brought about when Time cried over some small hurt, or asked for a meal when it had been long enough that his stomach had begun to feel hollow. The care and keeping of a child distracted from the business of earning a wage, after all. But then, why did they bring a child like him home? Twice even, first Arabella, and now him, why, knowing what they knew?

He had asked Mother the same thing last night. She hadn’t been able to give him a clear answer either, only said something about the laws of nature. But she and Father had sent for him by post, sent instructions to the woman who used to be his mother, and he had come by boat and then by train, and then he had been theirs. They had pretended for a long while, at first, that he was not a bother. They had taken him to see a fair in the town where they used to live, and Father and Mother had pointed to the stalls of wares and pastures of animals that had lined the main walk, and to the other children running pointlessly about.

“See, my dear?” Mother had said, watching the other children and then looking at Time once more. “Do you not wish to play with the others?”

Time had shaken his head. Other children did not like him much, usually for the same reasons that Arabella had disliked him. Perhaps that was why she had not been a true mother to him, because she was somehow more child than he.

Mother had looked at Father, and the two had smiled wider than ever, though they did not seem truly happy. They had worked so very hard to make it seem as though he was not a burden, harder than Time has seen anyone else try. After all, they had sent for him, they had chosen to bring him to their home, rather than simply looking after him for a short time as those people in Australia had done. It’d be like asking for a morsel of food and then complaining about having to hold the bowl and spoon it came with. After a time, though, Mother and Father at last forgot about him, and instead walked arm-in-arm, talking quietly together, while Time trailed silently after them.

There was a sort of empty feeling below his ribs when they turned away from him, almost like when it has been too long between meals, and like when he has a cough and his lungs ache and wheeze. There was some small relief, too, that of no longer being on display, no longer being expected to perform something unnatural to him. The two feelings mixed, knotted up together, and Time could only frown to himself and wish them away.

The two babies that Mother and Father brought home after him did like to smile more than he, though Time also made sure to impress on them the need for discretion, for quiet, for causing as little trouble as possible. That was the help he could offer Mother and Father, as the eldest, to shoulder some of the burden so they do not have to.

There is only so much he can do, though.

Mother is bringing home _another_ baby. Children may learn to keep out of the way, but they must still eat, as Arabella and her parents had discovered to their dismay when Time was but very small, and they must have a place to sleep, as Mother and Father learned today. It is not the first time they have moved from one town to another, nor the first they have struggled to find a house, but this, this is the worst it has ever been. The rain and the thunder had frightened him while they stood out in the square yesterday, that and the people crowding in on all sides, staring at Father, listening to him speak, judging him.

“Judgement Day,” Time murmurs again to himself, sitting in his little bed in the closet and looking at his siblings, his parents’ two other children, where they sleep.

“People do object to children sometimes,” Mother had admitted, and he doesn’t see why she and Father couldn’t have objected to these two, or at least to this fourth on its way now. Why, when they nearly cannot find a house for the children they already have, why must they send for yet another one? Mother and Father have always seemed good and wise and just in his eyes, as any proper parents ought to be, and yet they bring these unnecessary burdens upon their family, inviting in more and more children even when they already cannot keep them all.

He ought not to have been born. He hadn’t had any say in the matter, of course, just as Mother had pointed out last night, but still: he ought not to have been born, or he ought to have been killed before he got big enough to know the difference. Mother and Father ought not to have sent for him, or Arabella ought not to have kept feeding him, not when none of them truly wanted to care for and raise a child. He has done nothing but bring hardship to the only two people who have ever been kind to him. They have been terribly foolish in sending for more children, but at least Mother and Father have tried to hide the truth from him as much as possible, and have not thrown it in his face the way Arabella and her parents had done.

It was a very sorry parting gift, just as Arabella had said when he was small, for his father to have left her with the care of a child like him. He ought not to have been born, nor these other two, nor the next one Mother means to bring home soon. The box-cord he found high up on a shelf is rough against his palms, his fingers clumsy in the dark of the closet as he slowly fashions a knot. Just one knot, so far, but perhaps he ought to make more. He might remove himself from the problem, but these two, they don’t know what trouble they cause, they are still too little to understand it, and far too little to do anything to help it. It would be a sorry parting gift, just as his birth had been, if Time were to excuse himself but leave Mother and Father still to look after these others, and without even an older brother anymore to help keep them from being too much of a bother.

He is fashioning the third of the lengths of cord into a knot when he sees a light through the gap under the closet door. Mother is awake, dressing, having tea, and then the light is extinguished and her footsteps trail away out the door. It must be morning, he supposes, and finishes the third and last knot. Mother has gone away, in search of at least a short respite, rather than rousing her children immediately. Time stands and crosses to the little nest of blankets where his siblings lie sleeping, and takes care of them as he ought to have been taken care of when he was as small.


End file.
